5 Simple business Ideas Even Your Mother Can Start (and make $120/hr)

0:00 All right, I'm going to say one sentence and then

0:01 you can decide if this episode is for you.

0:03 If you're the type person who's got the entrepreneurial itch,

0:05 you want to do something,

0:06 you want to start a new business, you want to get that extra 5,

0:09 10, 15,000 dollars of income coming in every month,

0:11 but you don't know which idea to do,

0:13 which idea to start with, maybe you don't even have great ideas.

0:16 This is the episode for that person.

0:18 We brought on Chris, he's sort of the side hustle king.

0:20 He loves to find simple, no money up front,

0:24 easy businesses that can pull in cash quickly and then can grow from there.

0:28 And so Chris came on, he's got about five ideas for us.

0:30 I think you will love this episode with Chris.

0:39 All right, we got Chris Corner here.

0:41 You are back because you have uh absolute pipeline,

0:46 an absolute full stack of business ideas at all times.

0:52 Like, you know, what's the um open carry?

0:55 He's open carry with business ideas.

0:57 Yeah, if people haven't seen it,

0:58 you got a great uh Instagram channel and YouTube channel

1:01 podcast as well where you talk about um different business ideas.

1:05 And so that's what I want to do today.

1:07 Dude, I I have so many I It's not Friday, but I feel like we need to call

1:10 this no filler Friday cuz there's no filler today.

1:13 All stuff, no fluff.

1:14 All right.

1:15 I have a friend who uh I want to ask you this question on his behalf.

1:18 I have a friend who is a real estate agent and he does well.

1:22 He makes I think you know, let's call it 250, 300,000 dollars a year.

1:25 Been doing that for 10 years.

1:27 But he's bored.

1:28 And he wants a little more scale.

1:29 He wants a little more he doesn't feel a sense of progress, you know?

1:32 People always want a sense of progress.

1:34 And so he feels like um you know,

1:36 it's pretty hard to scale what he's doing there.

1:38 He's always poking around at, you know, should I buy this vending machine?

1:42 Should I do this side hustle, pressure washing, whatever it is.

1:46 Where does your head go as like, look,

1:47 if I was trying to help you get off the real

1:49 estate path and maybe have you have more entrepreneurial path,

1:52 what do you what do you say what do you tell him?

1:54 I would tell him to start reselling.

1:56 Um reselling like uh Costco liquidation items or government liquidation items.

2:02 So, you spend 200 bucks,

2:04 you get what's called a resale certificate which tells the government I

2:08 don't need to pay sales taxes on this cuz I'm passing it on.

2:11 Uh a lot of these websites require that number

2:13 from you in order to sell you liquidation items.

2:16 There's a website called GovDeals, there's a website called B-Stock.

2:20 On B-Stock you buy anything that people return to Costco.

2:23 I've done this myself.

2:24 Another business I've done.

2:25 I bought $7,000 worth of washers and dryers um for 250 each

2:30 on average and I'm selling them on Facebook Marketplace for 750 to 900 each.

2:35 It's an amazing business cuz you don't need a warehouse,

2:38 you don't need a bunch of space,

2:39 just a garage and it's all sold on Facebook Marketplace.

2:43 I'm on B-Stock right now.

2:45 And I see that I can buy two pallets

2:48 of men's gray Champion sweatpants joggers for $48,000 in New Jersey.

2:54 I [laughter] Sounds great.

2:57 I'm going to get 1,200 units.

2:59 What I'm most surprised is for 48,000 I get 1,200 units, 40 bucks.

3:03 That's not even a deal.

3:04 What's going on?

3:05 Oh, wait, wait.

3:05 Oh, no.

3:06 That's the retail value.

3:07 Yeah, okay.

3:08 I can buy this for seven grand.

3:09 So, I can buy it for five bucks a pop.

3:11 Um and it's saying that the the standard retail

3:14 value of this would be 40 bucks a pop.

3:16 And so, you're saying you're going to go

3:17 buy you probably wouldn't buy sweatpants, is my guess.

3:20 But uh what what would you be looking for product category-wise?

3:23 I like large appliances and outdoor furniture.

3:26 I think those are both great, especially this time of year.

3:29 Not electronics because there's a lot of variables, back to binary outcomes.

3:33 There's a lot of things that can break, there's a lot of testing involved.

3:36 I don't really like clothing personally,

3:38 but this is a great business because you don't need to find customers.

3:43 You just list them on Facebook Marketplace.

3:45 All your customers are there.

3:46 You have to buy right and you have to fulfill,

3:49 but the harder part is finding customers and you don't have to do that So,

3:52 I'm looking at I get 58 used refrigerators.

3:56 I'm buying them for $34 a unit.

3:59 $34 a unit for a refrigerator.

4:01 you.

4:02 What's going on here?

4:02 I might do this I might actually go do this just on sheer principle.

4:06 A $34 fridge?

4:08 Uh I have to buy 58 of them though.

4:11 And then, you know, you go to Facebook Marketplace

4:13 and you go look at what the fridges are selling for.

4:15 You look at the volume and you look at how much the price point is.

4:17 Because you're trying to find before you buy them.

4:19 Of course.

4:19 Before I buy, I'm going to go check

4:21 out and you're looking for probably two signals.

4:23 One is a price signal.

4:24 So, what is the going rate for these things?

4:26 And then, how do you get a sense of is this going to move?

4:29 You watch it for a week and you see if they move.

4:31 You message the seller.

4:33 You What What do you do?

4:34 You literally list it before you even bid on it.

4:37 And then, you just go to people just to just to understand.

4:40 Yeah, and then if they're like, all right, I'm ready to come get it.

4:42 You're like, actually I haven't bought it yet, you know?

4:44 Which is fine.

4:45 You're being honest, but you're you're getting signals ish.

4:49 Ish.

4:49 You're getting signals from the market before you take any risk

4:53 that there's enough demand for it at a specific price point.

4:56 And it is amazing what people will buy on Facebook Marketplace.

4:58 My sister is moving right now and they're listing like random Here's a hat.

5:05 This is like an old hat.

5:06 Like it's just a baseball cap.

5:07 And the guy drove 45 minutes to get a free cap.

5:10 You know, put the This is like Here's one drawer.

5:13 We're not even a cabinet.

5:15 Here's just a drawer.

5:16 Somebody go pay $7 for the drawer.

5:19 It's unbelievable the amount of like liquidity in the Facebook Marketplace.

5:23 It's unreal.

5:24 Well, and but the annoying thing is listing all this stuff.

5:26 It's tedious, but I just saw this TikTok of a guy that used Claude Co-work.

5:31 He just took pictures of all his stuff.

5:33 He uploaded it to Claude.

5:34 He said, here's my stuff.

5:35 Research what it costs.

5:36 List it.

5:37 Talk to people on my behalf.

5:39 Here's my calendar availability.

5:41 I don't care when as long as it's open.

5:43 Have people come to my house and pick it up.

5:45 And he did.

5:46 He sold like he was moving.

5:47 he needed to sell everything in his house, and Claude sold all of it for him.

5:51 So, like that even the tedious part is now fixable.

5:56 [laughter] That's kind of amazing, actually.

5:57 You could tell it to do the whole thing.

5:58 You could say, "Hey, go look on B-Stock, create fake listings,

6:01 decide which one is going to be the most profitable for me,

6:04 and then run the whole process." There's no reason that, you know,

6:06 Claude Bot couldn't do that.

6:08 No, totally.

6:09 Four pallets of denim uh onesies we could get.

6:14 $3 two onesies.

6:15 Sounds like a deal.

6:16 Um all right, this is a very addictive website.

6:17 This is this is a very fun.

6:19 Uh I got to get off B-Stock right now, otherwise I will lose my afternoon.

6:24 Hey, real quick.

6:24 If you like this episode of Chris and you want more,

6:26 he's actually agreed to give away his entire database of 200 business ideas,

6:31 just like the ones he's talking about on this podcast,

6:33 and um he's giving it away for free.

6:35 So, if you just go to the QR code that's

6:37 on the screen or the link in the description below,

6:39 you can get his database of ideas,

6:40 and these are like his blueprints for companies that he thinks can work.

6:44 And this guy's done it before,

6:44 he's built a a bunch of businesses that are successful.

6:47 So, go ahead, take advantage of this resource, and now back to the episode.

6:51 All right, so reselling is where you tell them to start.

6:54 And you'd say that's the right place to start because what?

6:56 You're optimizing for low risk?

6:58 Cuz that's a lot of work.

6:59 Yeah.

6:59 Uh I don't know if I kind of implied as like,

7:01 "My friend's kind of looking for a magic bullet,

7:03 like just one thing I do that's going to work really well.

7:06 Um you know, if I told him, 'Hey,

7:07 get out there and hustle.' He's like, 'Well, I know that.

7:10 I've been I've been trying to avoid that part.'" Um what's what's a business

7:13 that's like um more of a business and less of a garage sale inside hustle?

7:19 Mhm.

7:21 Probably implementing AI in a small businesses.

7:24 Like, we talked about this last time.

7:25 I we might have talked about the first time,

7:27 and we'll be talking about it in years because I mean,

7:30 there's 800,000 management consultants in the United States.

7:33 That's management, right?

7:35 Almost a million people that are just management consultants.

7:38 In 5 years, Sean, how many people will be AI consultants?

7:43 Like to small, medium, large, any size business.

7:46 Mhm.

7:47 Every single small business Well, not every small business,

7:50 large and small business is right now AI curious,

7:54 AI hungry, and AI clueless at the same time.

7:58 Those three things, if you're curious and you

8:01 you they're certain that it can help, they don't really know how,

8:05 they don't have the time, and they're you know,

8:08 they're not as tech forward as somebody who just eats eats business up.

8:11 Like that combination creates a ton of opportunity,

8:14 but that's a that's a still pretty broad picture.

8:18 What's a more um focused point of attack for something like that?

8:22 You go to your Chamber of Commerce and offer to give a free tutorial on AI.

8:26 Teach them what Claude is, good prompting skills.

8:29 Yeah, for free.

8:30 Vibe coding, and then you've got your buddy in the back with a clipboard,

8:33 and you sign people up for AI audits.

8:36 Uh so you use the the free seminar to get one foot in the door,

8:40 you get the free audit to get your second foot in the door,

8:43 and then by that point, you're a an AI god to them.

8:46 You're a genius, and you're the only AI genius that that business owner knows.

8:50 At that point, it's take my money.

8:51 Have you found a repeatable a repeatable use case where you're like, okay,

8:57 maybe it's for one class of business,

8:58 like dentists or lawyers or uh restaurants or whatever.

9:02 Or it's just a repeatable uh solution.

9:05 So, it's like, oh, pretty much every business

9:07 needs this thing that AI can do for them.

9:10 Right?

9:11 You know, when when the internet started,

9:12 every business kind of needed a website, but it was just starting from scratch.

9:15 Nobody had a website by definition at the beginning.

9:17 And over time, everybody ended up getting a website.

9:20 So, you knew that like just making the website was like the killer app.

9:23 It was like the killer service that everyone would need once.

9:26 And then you could sell it to them, and you could maintain it for them,

9:28 and do whatever for them, you know, going forward.

9:29 Okay, what's the equivalent of that today in today's world with AI?

9:33 Voice agents.

9:34 Pick up the phone, answer the phone for you.

9:36 Yep, and then chatbots uh second.

9:38 Kind of a distant second.

9:39 Voice agents are really good.

9:41 The latency is not that bad at all anymore because the LLMs

9:45 are smart enough to only be trained on your content, your data.

9:49 So, it's not like anytime a customer says,

9:51 "What are your operating hours?" It doesn't need

9:52 to go like read the whole training manual, right?

9:55 It just answers immediately.

9:57 So, AI voice agents are like the best

10:00 foot in the door for small businesses right now.

10:02 Hm, that's cool.

10:03 I like that.

10:04 It would be very interesting to hear from people who have done this.

10:07 Uh if you if you've done this, uh reach out cuz everybody's

10:09 kind of talked about this idea of like help businesses implement AI.

10:12 I think Mark Cuban is like, "Hey, if you're a kid, you know,

10:15 if you want to be successful,

10:16 go help businesses implement AI." I think it's like obvious.

10:18 However, I haven't heard a ton of stories.

10:21 Maybe this is just me not being kind of looking for it,

10:24 but I haven't heard a ton of stories of the specifics around this.

10:26 And I'm always curious more about the specifics than the general.

10:29 So, for example, um I saw this AI tool that was for medspas.

10:35 And they were like, "Look, every medspa offers Yeah,

10:39 I'm a little out of my depth here,

10:40 but every medspa is basically offering some sort of beauty service to somebody.

10:45 So, somebody's going to come in, they look one way,

10:47 they want to look another way,

10:48 and they have to believe that the medspa will get them from A to B.

10:52 That's all That's all a medspa has to do for them.

10:54 And so, what people were trying to do was figure

10:55 out how can you through whether it's a voice agent,

10:57 a tool on your website, a quiz, a upload your photo,

11:00 and I will show you the result of this product on your face, right?

11:04 Like something like that.

11:05 That's a pretty killer sales app for every medspa.

11:09 And so, going into medspas specifically and just being like, "Cool.

11:12 Here's what we're going to do.

11:13 We're going to make it where right now 95% of your curious

11:16 and interested customers don't develop enough confidence to go forward,

11:20 and we're going to build basically like a little sales tool for you

11:24 that lives on your website that gives

11:26 the customer the confidence that when they,

11:27 you know, it opens up the webcam and it scans,

11:30 and then it says, "Hey, we think you're a good candidate for XYZ.

11:32 Here's some photos of before and afters, right?" Like whatever it is.

11:35 Some version of that.

11:36 And if you can go get, you know,

11:38 500 to 1,000 med spas, because they all have the same need, right?

11:41 Like they're not This is a universal need for all 10,000 of them.

11:45 And you can go get 500 or 1,000 Let's just use 1,000.

11:48 1,000 med spas that are going to be paying you, you know, 50, 100 bucks a month.

11:52 So, now you're doing 50, 100,000 dollars a month off of, you know,

11:55 finding one specific pain point for one specific type

11:58 of business where off-the-shelf AI can actually solve their problem.

12:02 They're just not aware of it and don't know how to implement it.

12:04 Yeah, so I can think of two specific examples.

12:07 One of them for medium-sized businesses and one for small businesses.

12:10 The medium-sized business guy I interviewed on my podcast,

12:13 The Corner Office, last week, this dude was name-dropped by Amjad,

12:17 the the CEO founder of Replit, on the Joe Rogan show.

12:21 So, Amjad goes on Joe Rogan and he's like, "This guy, John Cheney,

12:24 he he started a business selling like custom

12:27 vibe-coded Replit apps into medium-sized businesses for $15,000.

12:31 15 up front, and then like I think 1,500 uh per

12:35 month or something like that for like one call a month.

12:38 He did 2.5 million his first year.

12:42 60% net margins.

12:43 This year he's going to do 8 million uh with a 50% net margins.

12:48 All built on Replit, just vibe-coding custom apps for medium-sized businesses.

12:52 example of a custom app for a medium-sized What does that even mean?

12:55 Yeah, so let's say you're an HVAC business with, you know, 30 crews.

13:00 He's going to build your you your own CRM.

13:02 So, you're not paying like ServiceTitan or any of the others $4,000 a month.

13:06 So, immediately, you get to capture the savings and you

13:09 get to have your own CRM just for you.

13:12 So, it's not even like AI-enabled.

13:14 It's just a replacement CRM that's built exactly as you have always wanted it.

13:19 Or like an accounting practice that builds you

13:22 um a communication tool or something to send

13:24 P&Ls and balance sheets to all of your customers

13:27 in an automated way um every month.

13:29 So, that's like a higher ticket medium medium-sized business.

13:33 And then another guy, he does this for barber shops.

13:36 He charges 2,500 bucks up front and then 250 a month.

13:40 That's kind of like a good ratio.

13:41 10% of whatever you charge up front, you charge per month.

13:44 And his pitch to the barber shops are like, "Hey,

13:47 you're cutting hair all day, but people need to make appointments.

13:50 So, I'm just going to make you an AI voice

13:52 agent that will answer the phone as you for you.

13:55 If they ask if you're an agent an AI agent, it will tell them,

13:58 but it won't be upfront and say upfront, you know, that I'm an agent." Right.

14:02 So, it will say, "All right,

14:03 what time?" It's just synced with your calendar and it books slots for you.

14:07 So, you will make more money and never talk on the phone again.

14:10 That's the pitch.

14:11 Make more money, never talk on the phone again,

14:13 don't lose trust with your customers because that's

14:16 like the big pushback from business owners is,

14:18 "I don't want a robot answering my phone." And it's like,

14:20 "Dude, your customers need their problems solved.

14:23 Whether it's a robot or you or text, they need their hair cut.

14:28 So, yeah, net of net, they would prefer to talk to you,

14:31 but they also just need a haircut and so they don't mind." So,

14:34 he just copies and pastes the same voice

14:37 agent over and over cuz they're all barber shops.

14:39 He just swaps out the name and the operating

14:41 hours and makes the calendar connection, he's good to go.

14:46 [laughter] I like that.

14:46 I like the barber I like the barber voice agent.

14:50 [laughter] The niche the niche.

14:51 Were there any other fun ideas that you had

14:52 on this list that you wanted to talk about?

14:54 What's the snail mail club?

14:55 Yeah, so that is that's kind of blowing up.

14:58 That snail mail subscription businesses are what like physical

15:02 box subscription businesses were 5 to 10 years ago.

15:05 It's literally just a letter with a stamp and you can send your own photography,

15:10 your own poetry, letters.

15:13 My wife started one where she sends recipes.

15:16 It's It's like a cookbook club and she she sends recipes

15:20 to women and they cook it and every month has a theme,

15:22 Greece, Italy, or whatever.

15:24 These are exploding right now, mostly driven by organic TikTok videos.

15:29 So, sorry sorry.

15:30 Explain So, the your title of this video

15:32 is she makes $1,000 a day sending letters.

15:35 Who Who Who is making and how is she making $1,000?

15:38 Her name's Hannah.

15:39 She owns the Tiny Post, and she writes like a a letter,

15:43 like a heartfelt letter about her, her life, whatever she finds important,

15:47 and then she puts stickers in there, and like handmade artwork.

15:51 Nothing AI generated, like it's all real,

15:53 it's all physical, and that's an important part.

15:56 And she just like is documenting her life and sending things that are important

15:59 to her to I think like 6 to 7,000 women every single month, and they love it.

16:06 And her churn is like 2%.

16:08 Beautiful pink envelopes.

16:11 Nailed it.

16:12 Um and she's just writing about her life,

16:15 and people are paying to receive these letters?

16:18 Yes, 10 bucks a month.

16:20 70% gross margins, 30% net,

16:23 and she went from zero to 60k MRR in 7 months through like six TikTok videos.

16:30 All organic, no paid ad spend.

16:32 What is happening?

16:33 What 10 bucks a month?

16:34 That's the price of Netflix, and you're getting just one letter from Hannah?

16:38 What Why are people doing this?

16:41 [laughter] What is going on?

16:41 We just we're sick of emails.

16:42 Like we want like More mail?

16:44 We want more mail.

16:45 We want mail.

16:46 We want to go to the mailbox and open a surprise.

16:49 We don't want junk mail.

16:50 This is for us, and it's special, and it's physical,

16:52 and real, and that's all the rage right now.

16:55 This is unbelievable.

16:56 Sorry, I'm just looking through her stuff.

16:57 This is uh unreal.

16:59 Wow, the US Postal Service commented on her video saying, "Great video.

17:02 Mind if we repost and use it?" [laughter] That's awesome.

17:06 That's crazy.

17:07 Okay, so she created this How did she get the people to do it?

17:10 She had a big following, or no?

17:12 No, she didn't.

17:13 She just posted TikTok videos about what she was doing.

17:16 Like her most viral video was a hidden camera in the kitchen

17:20 as she explained to her husband what this business was that she was starting.

17:24 So, he was like not getting it.

17:26 He's like an MBA finance guy and he's like,

17:28 "You want to send letters?" And like that video got

17:30 2 million views and brought her like her first 1,500 customers.

17:34 All organic.

17:36 Wow.

17:37 Uh okay, this is pretty crazy.

17:40 So, you said people are doing this?

17:41 This is like a trend now?

17:42 It is.

17:43 Dude, I So, my wife and I friend we put on a nonprofit

17:47 farmers' market for kids just last Saturday and I was out

17:51 there like taking videos of these kids' businesses and one of the seven-year-old

17:55 girls and her four-year-old sister had

17:58 their own snail mail subscription business.

18:00 And there was a QR code to a Shopify site and they like

18:03 draw pictures by hand and send them out for 10 bucks a month.

18:06 Like it's incredible.

18:09 Wow.

18:09 You know, I've always wanted something like this for kids.

18:11 Like, you know, kids have kids create so much art, right?

18:14 And like it'd be cool if someone like cared

18:17 about their art or like they got something back.

18:20 And so, I I was wondering like is there some

18:22 sort of pen pal mechanism that the parent would pay so

18:24 that the kids could kind of like stuff the envelope

18:27 with their art that they made that week or that month,

18:30 send it out and then they receive some

18:33 sort of like either message back, video back,

18:35 or letter back, or something back where it's like you know,

18:38 oh my god, I loved it.

18:39 Yeah, whatever.

18:40 Something from someone somewhere.

18:41 Whether it's kids sending to kids or it's kids sending to like old people.

18:44 I don't know I didn't know what the mechanism was.

18:46 But I feel like there should be something

18:47 like this for kids' art cuz kids generate

18:49 so much art and their excitement when someone's

18:52 excited about their art is like so tangible,

18:54 so heartwarming that as a parent I would gladly pay 10 bucks a month for my kids

18:58 to feel like they had their little like

19:00 their version of their Etsy store for their own art, you know what I mean?

19:04 Yeah.

19:05 Dude, I love that.

19:05 That should be a thing.

19:07 There's something that's kind of similar where you can mail in all

19:10 of your kids' artwork to a woman and she will like

19:13 basically lay it all out on a canvas and make it

19:16 like a a super large mural of your kids' artwork that's permanent.

19:20 And then she'll send the whole canvas back to you.

19:22 Oh, that's a cool idea.

19:23 I like that.

19:24 Yeah.

19:25 That's another type of thing where it's like

19:27 these heartwarming visual businesses that just could pop on TikTok,

19:31 and you just keep, you know,

19:32 TikTok becomes your customer acquisition funnel for the for things like that.

19:36 So, um you know, you've given a bunch of small stuff.

19:39 Uh and small I mean in a like in a positive way,

19:42 which is like quick, easy to start,

19:44 [clears throat] accessible, affordable, um doesn't take a ton.

19:47 Um I'm curious, do you have any ideas

19:49 that are on the other side of the spectrum,

19:51 maybe a little more complicated or a little harder to start,

19:54 but wow, the opportunity is is large from your from your perspective?

19:58 Yeah, so did I ever tell you about the time where

20:00 I I got a job at Amazon a few years ago?

20:02 No, you did not.

20:03 As a pick pack shipper?

20:05 To spy on them?

20:06 Okay, so you go to the warehouse.

20:08 Yep.

20:08 So, I owned at the time a third-party logistics business,

20:11 and I wanted to learn how Amazon did it.

20:14 And so, I went and got a job.

20:15 I stood in line, you know, 15 bucks an hour.

20:18 They trained me how to drive a forklift, and I loved it.

20:22 I ate it up.

20:24 I like in the trainings,

20:25 everyone else was like half asleep, and I'm like, "Okay,

20:27 what what about this?" And like my manager was like,

20:30 "Oh, you're going to be a manager here.

20:31 You're management material." And the whole time I'm like,

20:33 "Dude, I'm like a a secret spy." [laughter]

20:36 But, it it I walked away with an idea

20:39 that I think could be a billion-dollar idea.

20:41 And that's providing food to the three or four

20:44 million Amazon It doesn't have to be Amazon, but Amazon warehouse workers.

20:49 There are no food options.

20:50 These warehouses and distribution centers are usually

20:53 kind of out in the middle of nowhere.

20:55 There might be like a a, you know, a McDonald's or something.

20:59 They have like a a cafeteria with vending machines, but it's all garbage food.

21:03 And I thought like, "Man,

21:05 if I were to start like partner with a catering business and put a flyer

21:09 with a QR code on every car during every shift and just have them,

21:14 cuz they all have like the same lunch break.

21:17 Right.

21:17 Basically, they could pre-order food the day before

21:19 and you could just deliver it all at once.

21:21 Hey, here's all the food for everyone.

21:23 10 bucks a pop.

21:24 There's thousands of employees per warehouse.

21:26 This is something that would take some logistics,

21:28 it would take some funding, but someone's going to win here.

21:31 I It's not like one that I'm passionate about that I'm about Yeah, hard to do.

21:35 but it's one that I think someone will do.

21:37 Yeah.

21:38 Ste- that's interesting.

21:39 So, like, where's um what's an example?

21:42 Where is like uh the Amazon warehouse?

21:44 Where's the one that you went to?

21:45 Was it out Was it like this?

21:46 Did you see the problem when you were there?

21:48 Yeah.

21:49 Yeah, that's how I got it.

21:49 It was in like like Irving or something, Irving, Texas,

21:53 but there's like 32 Amazon warehouses in Dallas-Fort Worth alone.

21:58 Like, and they're they're as big as like three to six Costcos each.

22:03 So, there's no shortage of demand and it could be manufacturing,

22:06 it could be other types of warehouses.

22:08 Yeah, I wonder like if you could just even brand it

22:11 as like the whatever $8 lunch club or some like that, right?

22:14 And it's basically cool, you sign up for this and you're going to get

22:16 an $8 lunch every day of and you just tick the box,

22:20 you know, what did you want today?

22:21 Yeah, we have two options, three options each day.

22:24 And um and you know, I I've actually seen a couple of companies

22:28 that are doing really well with um so,

22:30 there's a lot of people trying to do robotic food production,

22:32 but food production is really, really hard, right?

22:34 So, like stores like Sweetgreen and others are trying to build

22:37 these custom machines to build their bowls, but every bowl,

22:39 every salad at Sweetgreen there's like a there's like more combinations of what

22:43 could be in that salad than particles in the universe type of deal, right?

22:46 Cuz it's like every every ingredient can be mixed and matched.

22:48 It's very difficult to to arrange for this and then you

22:51 have to constantly keep all the ingredients stocked inside the machines.

22:54 It's like pretty tricky thing to do.

22:56 But, there's a company that was providing these robots

22:59 to the large companies that do like school lunches,

23:03 prison lunches, corporate cafes.

23:05 Basically where you or like the grab and go options at uh grocery stores.

23:11 Where there's going to be like five things

23:13 in the in the little like refrigerator tray.

23:16 You just grab and go and they're they're sealed with like a a thing.

23:19 For those, you're basically just scooping the same ingredient into 4,000 trays.

23:25 And that's the food prep.

23:27 And so it's way it's like a way more

23:28 solvable problem because the robot just literally needs to be

23:30 able to scoop the same portion into the same

23:32 thing 3,000 times in a row without getting tired.

23:36 Well, like that's actually what robots are good at.

23:37 And so they've been doing pretty well with getting

23:40 these robots into these um large batch meal prep kitchens.

23:45 And so I wonder if you could basically do

23:47 the same thing but for the the Amazon side, right?

23:49 You could like you use these warehouses as your as your end customer.

23:53 And you're saying, "Cool, I can basically because I'm doing, you know,

23:57 2,000 of the same meal, I can actually have a highly automated,

24:01 you know, ghost kitchen here that's that's doing the work." Yeah,

24:04 I I think you could still do both.

24:06 Like I can see a one Amazon warehouse using both options.

24:10 Like the the [clears throat] warm meal, you know,

24:12 delivered from somewhere else and then that as well.

24:14 Yeah.

24:14 I would love to see someone just print a bunch of flyers,

24:17 put one on each car with a QR code to a stripe link,

24:20 and you know, have a menu there and just see how many people pay.

24:24 And then, you know, if you don't start the business, just refund them all.

24:26 But you could do that you know, with a few hours and 30 bucks and paper.

24:30 Like I'm just I I love experiments like that.

24:34 Like what would happen?

24:34 Like how many people could could I convert with only one flyer?

24:40 [laughter] All right, I'm going to go Let's go tote rentals.

24:42 Sean, do you know what a tote rental is?

24:45 Tote as in like a tote bag?

24:47 Uh kind of.

24:48 Like a tote rental box, plastic box.

24:51 Oh, okay.

24:51 It's like the moving boxes that are like the hard

24:55 plastic square moving boxes that stack on top of each other.

24:58 Got it?

25:00 This is a Google Trends of tote rental as a search term over the last 5 years.

25:04 We are spiking.

25:05 What?

25:06 What's What's the trend that I'm missing out on here?

25:09 Okay, here's what we're talking about.

25:10 So, ironically, everyone has these cardboard boxes from Amazon,

25:14 but we all also don't have them at hand when we go to move, move house to house.

25:19 And so, tote rentals as a service is a thing.

25:22 One tote rental basically replaces 400 cardboard boxes over its lifetime.

25:27 So, you've got an eco angle.

25:29 It's It's like an asset that you pay 20 bucks

25:33 for and it just pays for itself over and over and over.

25:36 You can start the business for a thousand bucks.

25:38 You work your way into real estate agents

25:40 and you can gift them like a tote rental

25:43 gift card that they can gift to their clients

25:45 when they sell a home or buy a home.

25:48 So, it's like a good like moving in or moving

25:50 out gift from a realtor to a to a homeowner.

25:54 And it's It's different than like an edible arrangements or something generic.

25:56 So, homeowners rent these, you drop them off,

25:59 they pack all their crap in it, then you pick them up later,

26:02 and you basically pay off the thing in your third or fourth rental,

26:06 and after that, it's pure profit less any like labor or gas or or time.

26:11 We Oh, man.

26:13 The OGs will know this.

26:14 Many years ago, we talked about a business that was doing this on the podcast.

26:20 I'm going to get all this wrong now cuz it's been a long time,

26:22 but I believe there was some story where it's like in New York,

26:25 somebody basically bought, you know,

26:26 a couple thousand dollars worth of these boxes.

26:29 They're renting them out.

26:30 The boxes pay for themselves after 2 months, and then basically became,

26:34 you know, it's the, you know, small version of a rental property, right?

26:38 You're renting out equipment.

26:39 But the beautiful thing about these is time need.

26:42 People don't want to own them.

26:44 There's like no desire to really own these.

26:46 People need them in the moment to move.

26:47 You can have them be super branded.

26:49 And so, it's It can become like a walking billboard

26:53 or you can literally even sell the ad space on them.

26:56 And then they're equipment that even though

26:58 they get kind of battered and bruised, it's sort of expected.

27:02 So, you don't need mint condition boxes in order to make this thing work.

27:06 I'm saying boxes but you said you call these totes, tote rentals.

27:09 So, do you know somebody who's doing this?

27:10 Wait, what's the what's the story here?

27:13 I do.

27:13 I know a guy in uh Fort Wayne, Indiana of all places.

27:17 There's like 100,000 people there and he

27:20 started going through real estate agents.

27:21 He bought these for himself for a move and he I think what he

27:25 did was he brought lunch to like a Keller Williams office or something and said,

27:29 "Hey, these are tote rentals.

27:30 They're growing like crazy.

27:31 Your clients want them.

27:32 We're going to give you some for free." Totes on loan is dominating Google.

27:36 It's got the first five listings.

27:38 But then there is there is you know,

27:41 smarter moves to rentals.com that's at the bottom of the page.

27:44 So, I don't know.

27:45 We'll see.

27:45 Yeah, he's totes on loan.

27:47 I just looked it up.

27:48 Okay, cool.

27:48 So, totes on loan Let's give him a shout.

27:51 Yes, his name is David Stillson.

27:53 All right.

27:53 So, David is out here 2024 and you said he went to the real estate office.

27:59 He's using them for distribution initially.

28:02 And uh Okay, so you get 30 boxes for 100 bucks to help with your moves.

28:08 Yeah, so that's what he does.

28:09 He sells like packages based on the number of totes that they that they get.

28:13 And he's doing a few few grand a month?

28:15 So, a few grand a month and this is Do you think this is hey,

28:20 this this is the type of business that's great just side income but going

28:24 all in on it maybe the juice isn't worth the squeeze or you think no,

28:26 no, no, it's just a matter of time till that's 15K, 20K a month?

28:30 Yeah, I think it's it's one of those businesses that's great as either or.

28:33 It's a perfect side hustle cuz you can keep your full-time job.

28:37 It's only a few hours a week.

28:38 What I love about it compared to other

28:40 like rental businesses like a bounce house rental businesses,

28:43 with that those things are freaking heavy.

28:44 You you to roll it up.

28:46 You got to lug it out there, you have to set up the bounce house,

28:49 you often have to leave someone there to babysit,

28:51 make sure kids don't break a leg, and it's just a pain.

28:54 But these you just drop it off on the driveway and you come back and get it.

28:58 Um so very, very low time investment.

29:01 Okay.

29:02 All right, tool rentals.

29:03 And why is this exploding on Google Trends right now?

29:05 Why why would this be going up?

29:06 Is it you know, moving's not going up,

29:09 it's just the rental aspect or what why why do you think it's spiking right now?

29:13 Yeah.

29:12 You know, it's like with any of these business ideas,

29:15 they just have their moment.

29:16 Like 5 10 years ago it was pressure washing,

29:19 like roof cleaning, stuff like that.

29:20 It's just having its moment and I think it's an a matter of education.

29:24 Like people most people would prefer to use this than

29:27 to have like missized or misshapen cardboard boxes that collapse,

29:32 they've got to go like scrounge them behind a grocery store,

29:35 or beg their friends in a Facebook group, or like save their Amazon boxes.

29:38 Like it's just a better experience when you consider everything.

29:42 Oh dude, if you are using cardboard boxes in your moving

29:45 and the just the amount of set up of each box,

29:47 taping of each box, labeling it's it's ridiculous.

29:50 You're wasting half your time there.

29:51 All right, I liked it.

29:52 What else you got?

29:53 What's next?

29:54 All right, so let's go Let's go wall printer.

29:59 What do you know about wall printers, Sean?

30:01 A wall printer as in Yeah, you got to give me some a few more words.

30:05 All right, so picture like a 3D printer,

30:08 except it's on rollers and you bring it inside

30:11 a retail store and it prints like images on a wall,

30:15 like a large mural or something like that.

30:18 All you do is upload a JPEG.

30:20 I'm watching it now.

30:21 So you're you're it's literally like a laser printer,

30:24 but it's instead of printing on a piece of paper,

30:26 it's it can go like a full full wall of a building

30:29 and it's printing like this video you have here is

30:31 like a um it's like a corporate office where it's printing

30:34 a timeline history of the of the company on a wall,

30:37 like you would walk into the office and see that.

30:39 Okay.

30:40 So I see this.

30:41 Um tell me more.

30:43 So, any business could use one of these.

30:46 And let's say it's a boring corporate office,

30:47 they want to spice it up a little bit.

30:49 Let's say it's a restaurant.

30:51 Like what restaurant wouldn't want an inside or an outside mural?

30:54 Like any business.

30:55 You name it, any business.

30:57 And like the tote rentals, this is kind of an educational thing.

30:59 They didn't know it was possible or they were paying some local artist

31:03 like three grand to paint this cuz it took them like a month, right?

31:07 This replaces the local artist.

31:08 Sorry, local artist, not sorry.

31:10 But, a 5-ft 8 wall took your cost, if you own the printer,

31:15 which you can get them for between 4,000 and 16,000,

31:18 you can finance them for like 50 to 150 bucks a month.

31:21 A 5-ft a 5 by 8-ft wall costs you $8

31:24 in ink and you can sell for that for about $800.

31:29 So, literal 99% gross margin.

31:32 You don't need a retail space, you don't need a warehouse.

31:35 You can keep it in your garage, in your closet at home.

31:38 You just roll up, upload the JPEG, start printing, pick it back up.

31:42 Well, okay.

31:43 AI is telling me that these units cost 35 to 65,000.

31:46 I'm guessing those are more heavy duty heavy duty versions of these.

31:50 Yeah, it depends on how high you want to go.

31:52 That's kind of the differentiator and on the quality of the machine.

31:55 If you want to go like if you're doing like a high school gym, Yeah.

31:58 right?

31:58 Putting like the basketball team on there,

32:00 you're going to need a a a more expensive one.

32:02 But, that's a smaller market.

32:03 And I'm guessing you can also upcharge for the graphic design that you're

32:07 going to print cuz they may not have it and you could be like,

32:09 oh yeah, we will lay this out.

32:11 We'll give you the free We'll do all the designs for free.

32:14 You just pay us to print it, right?

32:15 Like and you could even maybe like uh do a little

32:18 bit of spec work with that cuz you might have templates.

32:20 Like in this this example you showed, it's a corporate timeline.

32:23 Cool.

32:24 That's a template.

32:25 Um, oh, values.

32:27 That's a template.

32:27 The menu.

32:28 That's a template.

32:28 The you know, whatever.

32:29 Like our about us, founding history.

32:31 That's a template.

32:32 And you just basically say, hey look, I I your brand in this.

32:37 And you could kind of automate that now with a with AI.

32:40 So, you know, just go to their website,

32:41 pull their about us, put it in our about us template,

32:43 send it to them as like a hey, you know, I was at your store.

32:46 I thought you could put, you know, interested in putting this on the wall.

32:49 Is it outbound, you think,

32:50 to for this or you think there's going to be a lot of enough inbound?

32:53 I I I don't think people know wall printing as a Right.

32:56 as a thing to go search for even.

32:59 Yeah, that's kind of like uh tote rentals.

33:00 I mean, you want me to show show you the uh the Google Trends on this?

33:04 I mean, in the in the spirit of a a full disclosure here,

33:08 there's the Google Trends.

33:09 People are searching similar.

33:12 They are.

33:13 This is very visual.

33:14 It's like it's like pressure washing was 5 10 years ago.

33:17 It's fun to watch.

33:18 You get the time lapse of it and it's perfect for short-form video.

33:22 So, that's what you do.

33:23 You just post organically.

33:25 Um you go print some walls for free just to get the content.

33:28 I mean, it's $8 for the ink.

33:30 Um and then you just post it.

33:32 And then whatever organic pieces of content uh pop off,

33:35 you just push paid ad spend behind

33:37 that to a simple lead form and uh you close it.

33:41 You might even be able to do like if you I mean,

33:43 just to get this business off the ground, go knock on 100 doors.

33:46 Go to 100 businesses and then see what you can do.

33:48 You can take a binder of your portfolio.

33:51 Um go you know, do a couple for free then do do a binder

33:53 portfolio and see what you can get going or um or, you know,

33:57 even before you do your own, just take uh you know,

34:00 images off Instagram of what other people did and go around and say,

34:04 "Hey, would you want this?" Um just just to even learn like where is the market?

34:08 Like is there one type of business that's particularly into this, you know,

34:12 is it real estate agents?

34:13 Is it, you know, whatever whatever it is.

34:15 If you go to their website if you go to the wallprinter.com,

34:18 the company that sells these machines, the headline,

34:21 which is just so funny to me,

34:22 it just says instead of saying anything about their product,

34:25 the headline when you hit the website says,

34:28 "Those who never take risks will work always work for someone who has."

34:33 [laughter] Basically just tempting you to become an entrepreneur.

34:35 This is sort of shaming you into becoming an entrepreneur,

34:37 which honestly is always a bit of a red flag in my book.

34:40 Any anytime somebody's like really aggressive on the you know,

34:44 be your own boss, selling you that selling you that dream.

34:47 I'm always a little skeptical of that, but Uh okay, this is interesting.

34:51 How did you first uh find this wall printing niche?

34:55 I saw an Instagram video and honestly,

34:57 this is one of those video this one of those businesses where you don't

35:00 need to buy the thing and then like hope and pray that you find customers.

35:04 You can start posting other people's videos and say stuff like this is

35:08 what wall printers can do instead of this is what my wall printer did.

35:12 Uh or you just go post a Facebook marketplace,

35:14 generate some leads, throw up an AI generated website, get some leads.

35:18 Then once you have like some bookings or something,

35:21 then you go finance a machine.

35:23 So you've given out two ideas so far

35:25 that I would call like white belt businesses.

35:27 Is this the way basically businesses you can you do

35:31 as a starter business that doesn't take ton of capital,

35:34 ton of time, ton of skill, you don't need a big network,

35:37 and you can do these to get to that kind

35:39 of two grand a month, five grand a month,

35:41 10 grand a month to start getting that [clears throat] money

35:42 rolling in and really get in the game as an entrepreneur.

35:45 Is that Is that the right way to frame the ideas

35:48 that you're drawn to or that you like to share about?

35:50 Like what Give me like draw a box.

35:53 What is the What is the label of the box of these ideas?

35:57 So all of my ideas are run through like my own personal filter,

36:00 which is I've started over 80 businesses and I've learned what I hate,

36:04 what I love, what most people hate, what most people would probably love.

36:07 And I like to call those binary outcomes.

36:11 Binary outcome businesses.

36:12 And that is a business that is just simple.

36:14 Like you put X in and you get out Y.

36:17 A custom home building business is not that.

36:19 A home cleaning business is not that.

36:21 I want a business where it's just a very clear defined value

36:24 that you add and then you get paid and you get a five-star review.

36:28 That's like one of my filters.

36:30 The other one, which I I heavily biased towards,

36:32 is approachability and affordability.

36:35 Um last time I was on the pod,

36:37 I was talking about like some backyard businesses, if you remember.

36:40 Like Yep.

36:40 In in in-ground trampoline, yeah.

36:43 Yeah, and I talked about another business,

36:45 which was like the guy dollhouses kits, right?

36:48 Remember that one?

36:49 Yeah.

36:49 And And Sam was like, "Dude, that that backyard idea sucks,

36:53 but like I like the dollhouse idea." But like,

36:56 if I were to run this You can tell I've been

36:57 thinking about this in the shower like every day since, right?

37:00 This is like my moment, and Sam's not even here to defend himself.

37:03 When I run that through my filter, it's like,

37:05 "How many people could launch a guy dollhouse subscription business

37:09 in the world and be successful?" And how approachable is that?

37:13 That's like a you know one hand, yeah.

37:15 Yeah, exactly.

37:16 And like it's not approachable, it's pretty complex, actually.

37:19 Like designs and materials and shipping and all that.

37:22 Branding, educating the market, all of it, yeah.

37:24 Right.

37:25 Whereas any dude can go rent an excavator on Facebook

37:27 Marketplace and start digging a hole for a trampoline.

37:30 So it's like not sexy, but it's much more approachable,

37:32 and there could be three guys in every 30,000,

37:36 you know, person city owning that same business, which is what I love about it.

37:40 So you like So when you said binary businesses, and you said, you know,

37:43 a home cleaning business not one, luxury home builders not one,

37:46 but digging holes for trampolines, in-ground trampolines, is one.

37:51 Explain the difference there.

37:53 Well, why what's Why should one person be a little

37:55 skeptical or weary of going into the first category,

37:58 but the second category has some additional benefits.

38:00 What are What's the difference?

38:01 Yeah.

38:02 So I'll just I'll speak to two businesses that I I've actually started,

38:05 and not a hypothetical business like the trampoline one.

38:08 Um binary outcome.

38:09 So we I own a tree trimming business, and it's the best business in the world,

38:15 cuz we need to do one of two things.

38:17 That's it.

38:18 We need to remove a tree entirely,

38:20 or we need to trim a tree, like specific branches.

38:24 So we show up, this one, cool.

38:27 We cut it down, we throw it in the truck, five-star review, 1,500 bucks, right?

38:33 We've never got less than a five-star review, ever.

38:36 And it's not cuz we're amazing operators, it's just because it's simple.

38:39 Right.

38:40 Conversely, I've owned a a house cleaning business, and it was a nightmare.

38:45 It was an absolute wreck.

38:46 We were going through real estate agents cuz we thought,

38:49 "Hey, they have a lot of surface area.

38:50 They're They're They're touching and talking

38:52 to a lot of homeowners on a daily basis,

38:54 so they can refer out all these jobs." And then,

38:57 we had to get 1099s all these house cleaners cuz we didn't want employees,

39:01 and so we were finding these super unreliable house cleaners.

39:05 They had a vast array of equipment.

39:08 They would always show up late,

39:10 and sometimes the realtor would inspect the house,

39:12 sometimes the homeowner would.

39:13 They had varying degrees of quality and preferences, and one would say, "Hey,

39:17 there's a hair on my floor." And the other one like didn't care.

39:20 It was just It was a recipe for one-star reviews,

39:24 and for low margins, and for people not showing up.

39:26 And it was complex, but it like A complex

39:29 business is fine if the juice is worth the squeeze,

39:31 and the margins are there, or it's high ticket,

39:33 but it didn't have any of those things.

39:35 Mhm.

39:36 So.

39:37 And so, you know, most people get tripped

39:39 up with a business like the tree trimming business,

39:41 where they say, "Okay, yeah, I was listening to this podcast.

39:43 The guy talked about tree trimming.

39:44 It made sense.

39:45 Yeah, I go We go, we trim the trees, we get 1,500 bucks.

39:48 What's not to love?

39:49 That's awesome." Mhm.

39:50 And um you know, reality will hit as soon as I go start,

39:54 you know, Shawn's, you know, trees and trims.com.

39:58 I go buy the domain.

39:59 I'm ready.

40:00 Uh you know, I figure out how to I go watch a couple videos on trimming trees,

40:03 and then no customers, right?

40:06 And so you always have this like bottleneck of I think for most people,

40:10 they don't really understand how to get their first 10,

40:13 100 customers to start getting the momentum that is required

40:17 in order to to to get going in a business.

40:19 And they sort of have all these false starts because they have an idea,

40:22 they get really excited, they spend a bunch of time on the idea,

40:25 but not time acquiring customers.

40:27 So, the the the sort of perceived investment goes

40:29 up and up and up and up and up,

40:30 but they're not getting any getting any ground yet.

40:34 And then when they can't really figure out how to get any sales or customers,

40:38 you know, the excitement fades around the idea

40:40 and now they're on to the next one.

40:41 And I've seen this pattern over and over again in people

40:44 in my life who want to be entrepreneurial but don't quite make it happen.

40:47 And so, what is your method or, you know, let's take the tree trimming example.

40:53 Let's say I'm now in a different city than you are, right?

40:56 I'm in I'm I'm over in Denver.

40:58 And let's say I'm in Denver and I want to start this business.

41:00 How do I use my time early on to get that initial momentum?

41:04 [clears throat] Yeah, so let's boil down business.

41:06 There's two tasks that any business owner needs to do.

41:10 They need to find customers, they need to fulfill customers.

41:13 That's it.

41:14 Like it's not like I need to get an LLC,

41:16 I need to make like you need to find customers and fulfill them.

41:19 And guess what?

41:19 Net of net, all things considered,

41:22 it's harder to find customers than fulfill them.

41:24 That's the harder thing.

41:25 So, do the harder thing first.

41:27 Before you buy a wall printer, before you buy a chainsaw,

41:30 before you even find a crew that you're going

41:31 to sub out all the chainsaw work to, find customers.

41:35 Try to find customers or learn about how to acquire

41:38 customers in any niche cuz if you can learn Facebook ads,

41:41 then you can find customers in an e-com business or in a tree trimming business.

41:45 So, Right.

41:45 spend time up front trying to find customers,

41:47 not like learning how to cut and like if you shouldn't cut

41:51 an oak tree in February and we learned that the hard way, right?

41:53 There's like disease and stuff.

41:54 Don't care or worry about any of that stuff.

41:58 Go to Facebook Marketplace and post,

41:59 I own a tree trimming business, I can trim your tree.

42:01 See if anything happens.

42:03 If it doesn't, then like feel it out.

42:05 How you still feeling about this?

42:06 Still still enthused?

42:08 Cool.

42:08 Then like learn some Facebook ads or post to Facebook groups or like do X, Y,

42:13 or Z number of things until you get some people that are

42:16 raising their hands that aren't your mom or your your sibling and saying,

42:20 "I want you to trim my tree." Now it's like, "Okay,

42:22 now I got to figure out how to fulfill it." So,

42:23 rather rather than the kind of scattershot, cuz it's I can put up flyers and I

42:27 can go to Facebook groups and marketplace and Craigslist

42:29 and I can run Facebook ads and Google ads

42:30 and Yelp and I can do all those things.

42:32 What what worked for you with the tree trimming business?

42:35 It was It Well, it's funny cuz it's like I like to say

42:38 the efficacy of a growth hack is directly correlated to its lifespan.

42:44 Okay?

42:45 So, what works in this month may never work again.

42:48 It may never work until, you know,

42:50 the next year or during the same month cuz it's seasonal.

42:53 You you just never know.

42:53 So, what worked to find our first

42:55 customers was posting organically to Facebook Marketplace.

42:59 Even though Facebook doesn't want you to post for services, right?

43:01 You have to kind of find some tricky ways around that.

43:04 That worked, but we couldn't scale it.

43:06 But it we didn't need to scale it because

43:07 then we started using Facebook ads with 15-second vertical videos.

43:11 And then that worked.

43:13 But what really scaled for us is referrals through real estate agents,

43:16 landlords, and property managers.

43:19 That's like our big three.

43:20 And we just get referrals and we send them gifts and we

43:23 follow up with them every month and every time there's a storm,

43:25 we get ahead of it before and then afterwards we say,

43:28 "Hey, can we help?" Like referrals is our 80/20,

43:31 but it took us all kinds of other methods of until we got to that point.

43:36 Can you give us a sense how successful

43:38 is this tree trimming business that you have?

43:40 Yeah, so we do mid six figures a year

43:42 in revenue and about half of that in net profit.

43:46 And you're in one one market or Yeah, just one one market, Dallas-Fort Worth.

43:50 Got you.

43:51 Okay, amazing.

43:52 Let's do another one.

43:53 What's another fun, interesting business that business idea you have?

43:58 So, this is another one that I've actually done.

44:00 This is a great summer business.

44:02 RV rentals as a service.

44:04 Okay.

44:04 So, you You three types of RVs.

44:07 Class A, which is like a big tour bus looking thing, right?

44:11 Very intimidating for most people.

44:13 Class B, which is like a converted Sprinter van, right?

44:16 Van #vanlife.

44:18 And then Class C, which is a like a motorhome, right?

44:22 It's like the vehicle and the the home combined.

44:26 And then you've got like pull behind trailers.

44:27 So, usually, in most markets, a Class C a motorhome is the way to go.

44:33 And so, there's a few platforms, RVshare and Outdoorsy being the biggest.

44:37 That's like the Uber and Lyft of the space.

44:39 These are great because you can finance them, and I'm not advocating you should,

44:43 but you can finance them for 20 to 30 years cuz they're treated like a home.

44:48 And so, a $40,000 Class C RV will cost

44:51 you like between 250 and 600 bucks a month.

44:55 And you rent these things out for 150 to 400 bucks a night.

44:59 And in many markets, um people are fully booked.

45:02 They're 40 to 80% booked.

45:05 And they pay for themselves in the first year or two.

45:08 So, the the thesis is that the average um RV owner

45:12 really only uses their RV for 5 to 15 nights a year.

45:16 And so, you know, it just doesn't make

45:17 good financial sense for people to buy an RV.

45:19 But to be on the business end of it,

45:21 to buy one and use it occasionally for your family, block off your own dates,

45:25 and then list it on these marketplaces that are happy to bring you customers,

45:29 um it's a beautiful business.

45:30 I've owned this business.

45:31 And what's the trick?

45:32 Is it you got to be near like these national

45:34 parks or like is it like is location the key variable?

45:36 What's the key variable?

45:37 Like what's the difference between 30% occupancy

45:41 and 80 to 90% occupancy for these?

45:44 It's supply and demand based on your unit type.

45:48 So, in some markets,

45:49 you're going to have a lot more demand for pull behind trailers because

45:53 everyone has a truck and they're all going to Coachella or something, right?

45:56 In other markets, there's more demand for Class B or for Class C.

45:59 So, there's a very simple way to gauge what your supply and demand is.

46:04 And I actually I love this idea.

46:07 Um and I I got my MBA like 6 years ago and obviously I'm a terrible student,

46:11 so I was never paying attention and I was researching this idea

46:15 in the back of the class and here's exactly what I did.

46:17 And this works for Airbnb, works for any like, you know, sharing platform.

46:23 So, I would act as if I were a consumer on RVshare Outdoorsy and I would say,

46:29 all right, I want to book them for this weekend for 3 nights for class C.

46:33 Okay.

46:33 And then it would say, 47 results.

46:36 And then I would say, all right, 1 year from now,

46:38 exact same weekend, 1 year from now, 3 nights class C RV.

46:42 So, all the same filters, but the dates were a year from now.

46:45 And instead of 47 results, it would say like 470 results.

46:49 Mhm.

46:50 So, it's like, interesting.

46:51 All right, cuz no one's booking a year out.

46:53 I I just want to know what the supply is.

46:55 Right.

46:56 And what the the like the market occupancy is.

46:58 So, if those numbers were true, it's like,

47:00 wow, they're 90 90% booked for this unit.

47:03 Let's do the same search for the same date, but with class B.

47:06 13 results this weekend, 20 results a year from now.

47:10 So, it's like, oh, okay.

47:11 Class A.

47:12 And then I just made a Google sheet of all these things.

47:14 And I did this for like 2 hours in the back of my class.

47:17 And at the end of it, I was like,

47:18 in my local market, which is North Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs,

47:22 it was screaming to me, class C RV,

47:25 it's got to have like six to nine people, yadda.

47:28 And we don't live near national parks like Texas

47:30 is does not have good state or national parks.

47:33 It's just people want uh machine.

47:35 So, I went so far as to reach out to these platforms and said,

47:38 hey, I just did this research.

47:40 Here's my Google sheet.

47:41 Does this vibe with what your research shows?

47:44 Cuz they see it all.

47:45 And they want me to buy units to rent them out on their platform.

47:48 So, they reached out and they're like, how did you figure this out?

47:50 This is exactly matching like what our research shows.

47:53 People just need to buy class C RVs.

47:56 I was like, I just ran searches on your website.

47:58 So, all that to say, anyone anyone could do this in any market to find

48:02 out like where the supply and the demand is.

48:04 And then just best principles apply of let's just take good pictures,

48:07 good description, be hyper responsive, uh and you'll win.

48:10 Right.

48:11 It's actually pretty clever.

48:12 The kind of looking at year out versus the current uh current

48:16 availability in order to figure out the how much booking uh how

48:21 much of the total supply is booked um because you would just

48:25 rather be in an environment where there's just a lot of demand, right?

48:28 And and you can also look at reviews and you can do other things like that.

48:31 But like you said, that that works for Airbnb, that works for RVshare,

48:35 that works for any kind of like sharing economy type of service.

48:38 Yeah, it works on Turo.

48:39 I did it with like a Cybertruck and learned like,

48:42 "Holy crap, there's way too many Cybertrucks on Turo.

48:45 It's just not a good investment." Um but this is

48:48 a great business because it's a perfect side hustle.

48:51 Like if you want an RV for your family, you can have one for free.

48:55 Right.

48:55 Like there's your there's your clipperable moment.

48:56 It's a free RV and you get paid.

48:59 What I don't like about this business is the messy middle.

49:02 Like you either need to own one RV and kind of do this a little bit on the side

49:07 to make some extra money or you need

49:08 to own 10 plus and then just outsource everything, hire a person, like you know,

49:13 go to like an RV rental or an RV storage lot, you know,

49:17 spend 150 bucks a month to keep them not on your house and set up systems,

49:21 take YouTube videos so people can know like how to clean it,

49:24 how to check in, how to check out.

49:25 Like the worst thing you could do here is own like two

49:27 to four of them because your life is not it's not fun.

49:32 Yeah, that's kind of my read on actually the majority of these businesses,

49:35 which is um the juice is not really worth the squeeze.

49:38 I I There's a reason I called them the sort

49:40 of white belt businesses and that's not meant to be derogatory.

49:42 What it means is it's a you need

49:44 a great you need a starting point as an entrepreneur.

49:47 Everybody starts somewhere.

49:48 And um you know, if you start off saying,

49:50 "I'm going to build Tesla." Unless you are truly,

49:53 truly special and gifted and unique, but guess what?

49:55 Even Elon didn't start with Tesla, right?

49:57 He started with a a much simpler business before that.

49:59 Um and so, you know, Warren Buffett was, you know,

50:02 selling uh he was putting arcade machine uh games in uh barber shops.

50:06 Like, you know, everybody starts somewhere.

50:08 And in doing that, you learn a lot.

50:10 You learn a lot about yourself.

50:12 You learn a lot about generating demand,

50:14 about operations, about hiring, about finance.

50:16 You you learn in this like kind of safe sandbox.

50:20 And it's simple enough that you actually get

50:22 started versus trying to go for the perfect business.

50:25 You really you really don't even get in the game

50:26 is what I've what I've seen from most people.

50:28 And so, I do like the idea of micro businesses, but however,

50:31 most of them, almost by definition, are pretty bad businesses to own.

50:34 And um and you end up working a ton.

50:37 You get kind of like build yourself a job is is what happens,

50:40 I think, in most cases.

50:41 And that's in the success scenario.

50:42 Of course, there's outliers, but I just wanted to say that aloud.

50:45 Now, I'm curious from your point of view,

50:47 what are the businesses that you see people talk

50:50 about as if they're good businesses, but you're like,

50:53 "Dude, I wouldn't touch that with a 10-ft pole." Well,

50:55 often times there are businesses and niches that are

50:57 like really good to sell high-ticket courses around.

51:01 And so, it makes it seem on the surface

51:03 like this is a great business when really it's

51:05 like people are just making a lot of money

51:07 selling you the idea that it's a great business.

51:09 And there are exceptions to this, but I think one

51:11 business that people wrongly assume is passive is vending machines.

51:18 Like, I've I can't tell you how many people I've heard say like,

51:20 "I just just a few vending machines and just extra thousand bucks a month,

51:24 just passive, just make It sounds passive.

51:27 Sounds passive, though.

51:28 Yeah, sure.

51:29 It's just not, you know?

51:31 Those vending machines break and the credit card readers break and you have

51:33 to refill them and your if it's if snack and drink, they go bad.

51:38 You have to swap them out.

51:39 Is anything truly passive by that definition, right?

51:43 No.

51:43 No.

51:43 That's just one that it has the perception of being passive and of being

51:48 amazing and it I think it is net of net a good business.

51:51 It's just not nearly as good as a lot of people are selling you the idea on.

51:54 Right.

51:55 Yeah, for me there's like the I think your your test of how

51:59 many people are trying to sell you high ticket courses and how

52:01 sleazy do they look is is the is the best proxy you

52:04 can sort of I I don't even need to see the underlying business.

52:06 I can just tell from the from the landing page

52:08 of the person who's trying to convince me it's a great business.

52:11 And so you know there's these turnkey Amazon FBA businesses.

52:17 And of course you could build a great Amazon business many people do.

52:20 But so so I'm not saying there's not outliers in any of these.

52:24 But man that's a brutal business to try to go

52:25 into is to build these like turnkey generic Amazon FBA businesses,

52:31 YouTube faceless channels, most drop shipping stuff like you know all

52:34 this is like anything that anything that is around

52:37 stock trading or any kind of trading strategy

52:41 or trading courses like you know literally run away.

52:44 Yeah, I'm Speaking of Amazon FBA there's there are a few

52:47 guys that went to federal prison over selling high ticket FBA courses.

52:51 So that's public record.

52:52 Because of what?

52:53 What was the what put them in jail though?

52:55 They promised guaranteed returns and in addition which that's

52:59 enough to get you in trouble with the SEC.

53:01 In addition to that I believe at least one of them was just a Ponzi scheme.

53:06 They were just taking money and just buying cars with it.

53:10 Amazing.

53:11 Well Chris always good having you on man.

53:14 Shout out your podcast where should people find you?

53:16 The Kerner Office that's k o e r n e r t k o pod.com.

53:20 All right man.

53:21 Thanks for coming on.

53:22 All right.

53:22 Thanks Sean.